INFO VISUALIZATION: I just found a great new blog called Strange Maps. The title says it all -- give it a look!

Astute readers may notice that I've been deeplinking images on my last few posts. For shame! I know -- it's a nasty practice. Unfortunately I'm sans-Photoshop on this computer and I haven't been able to move the images over and format them correctly. I'm going to try and revisit soon from my home computer and update the links.

INFO VISUALIZATION: This isn't a perfect visualization -- but it's an interesting attempt at showing the spread of today's religions over Eurasia. I'd love to see a more comprehensive look animated as well some day. Kudos again to Wikipedia.

Specifically, it looks at crime rates v. religiosity and finds that, at best, the relationship is random and, at worst, religion has the effect of increasing crime rates. (Correlation does not imply causation though. It could be random, or perhaps people turn to religion when the streets around them are crime ridden?)

Just prior to the two oil price spikes of the 1970s, discretionary spending by US households had also gone to excess. The GDP share of consumer durables and residential construction -- the latter being a proxy for the discretionary demand for shelter -- was running at peak levels of around 14.5%. In the aftermath of those two earlier energy shocks, discretionary spending collapsed -- with the combined share of consumer durables and homebuilding falling to 11.5% in the mid-1970s and 10.5% in the early 1980s. These were the most severe consumer-led recessions on record in the United States. In the current expansion, discretionary household spending has moved into a similar zone of excess. The combined share of consumer durables and residential construction has averaged 14.3% of GDP over the past year -- virtually identical to peak shares hit just before the two energy-shock-induced consumption collapses of the 1970s. In other words, just as the energy shocks of the 1970s hit US households at a point when their spending behavior had gone to excess, the same is the case in the present climate. Yet unlike those earlier periods, today’s asset-dependent, overly-indebted American consumer is lacking any semblance of a backstop of income-based saving to shore up the downside. It would be one thing if American consumers were committed to defending modest lifestyles. It is another thing altogether in today’s era of excess -- there is much more room and greater urgency for consolidation.

The only investment Dan and I have in non-cash assets right now is investment in international bonds (Templeton Global Income Fund) because I just have a bad feeling about economy as a whole right now.

However, I've been reading more and more about the housingbubble. And I've seen it play out in real life; none of my friends are looking to buy houses, we all understand that they are overpriced. Today, I read a very interesting article by the good ol' bear Krugman, called Safe as Houses.

I used to live next door to a Russian émigré. One day he asked me to explain something that puzzled him about his new country. "This place seems very rich," he said, "but I never see anyone making anything. How does the country earn its money?"

The answer, these days, is that we make a living by selling each other houses. Since December 2000 employment in U.S. manufacturing has fallen 17 percent, but membership in the National Association of Realtors has risen 58 percent.

[P]eople are feeling insecure because they understand that today's economy is built on shaky fundamentals. Average Americans may not sit around fretting about America's outsized budget and trade deficits, and its unprecedented foreign indebtedness. But many of them - as buyers, borrowers and employees - are concerned about the increasingly bubbly housing sector.

The economy's shortcomings are nowhere more obvious than in the job market. Nearly four years into an economic expansion, job growth is still substantially slower than in previous recoveries. Wages for 80 percent of the work force are barely keeping pace with inflation, and aid for the workers hurt by global trade is paltry. Because Mr. Bush fails to acknowledge the lackluster job and wage growth, he fails to respond appropriately. The administration's insistence that the economy is getting better all the time - a stance that is based on statistical aggregates that are often divorced from individuals' actual experience - only intensifies the anxiety that people feel.